Father Figure
by The Girly Man
Summary: She had waited for years. She had given up hope. She assumed he was dead. But what is she supposed to say when her five year old son is asking where his father is?


**One-shot! Whoo!**

**I'm not sure if I like this one very much. I wrote it over a month ago and didn't post it because I'm still not sure if I'm a big fan of it. Oh well. Might as well give it a shot, eh?**

**Father Figure**

"Mommy… what happened to Daddy?"

It was a thing she hated to think about and hated even more to talk about. "Why… why do you ask?"

Her son looked up at her and she almost began to cry. He was almost identical to his father. "Everyone at school has a Daddy… but I don't. How come?"

Tohru was afraid to answer. The story was much more complex then a five year old could comprehend. But every detail of that night was so clear in her mind, it still scared her.

_He had been acting strange since graduation day, and she hadn't known why. As she thought back on it, she began to realize that he had known all along what would happen to him. And he had had intentions of the night they spent together. That was the night before the accident._

_It couldn't really be called an accident, because the perpetrator had been planning it for years. It just made her feel better to think of it as an accident._

_But she knew it was far from true._

_She remembered the sadness in his eyes as he took her outside into the cool summer night and kissed her sweetly, but sadly. She was confused._

_"Is something wrong?" she choked, and he shook his head slowly. _

_A blade whizzed between their faces and stuck upright in the ground beside them._

_"I love you," he whispered into her ear as a tear rolled down her face._

_And it happened so suddenly._

_He was taken right from her._

_"Akito!" She screamed as the tears fell faster. Akito snickered at her, pulling his dagger out of the ground._

_She watched him refuse. She watched Akito slit the side of his face open with the dagger. He continued to refuse and was shoved to the ground._

_Tohru rushed toward him and tried to help him up, a mixture of blood, dirt, and tears coating her hands._

_"You can't leave me!" she cried, and Akito pulled him up by the back of his shirt. He hung there limply, defenseless at the hands of defeat._

_"I am not leaving you," he told her. "Wait for me."_

_He was taken away by the Devil of the Night._

A month later, Tohru discovered she was pregnant.

He had wanted this, she assumed. If he never returned, he wanted to somehow still be with her.

But his last words confused her. _Wait for me?_ It would be impossible for him to escape Akito's confinement. How long would she have to wait? She had lost all hope over three years ago. She assumed he was dead.

She hated Akito. She hated him so much she thought she could kill him. She hated him _selfishness. _His _jealousy._ She couldn't stand to think of him.

Tohru was only 19 when she gave birth to her son, whom she blessed with his father's name: Yuki. It was her way of hope that the first Yuki would return.

But he never did.

And now her baby was five years old and wondering where his father was.

"Your father…" she began, but didn't know where to start.

_"I love you."_

"Your father… went away… before you were born…"

_"I am not leaving you."_

"When will he come back?" the little boy asked. "Will I get to meet him?"

_"I did not leave you."_

Tohru pulled her son closer to her and hugged him. "Soon, I hope."

_"You waited for me, Tohru."_

Tears rolled down her face and she began to sweat.

_I'm going insane,_ she decided. _I can hear his voice in my head._

"Tohru…" the voice was becoming louder. "I love you."

Something inside her snapped and she looked around frantically. Releasing her son from the hug, she stood up, her eyes fixed on a corner of the apartment, near the window.

She was imagining a figure standing there. A figure with torn, dirty clothes and a scar running down the side of their face. A figure with a beaten, sad-puppy look in his eyes. The eyes that were so familiar…. The exact same eyes as her son.

"Yuki… you…" she whispered, rubbing her eyes. She didn't believe it. She couldn't…

…until the figure rushed towards her and kissed her.

Then she knew it was him.


End file.
